Prison tourism: Tobolsk jail converted into theme hostel

Travelers can experience life of a prisoner at new Siberian guesthouse. Source: Press photo

Representatives of the hostel say that guests will be accommodated in real prison cells, and will even be fed prison food in order to experience the life of an inmate.

A disused
prison in the Western Siberian city of Tobolsk is set to reopen – as a hostel
for travelers.

The new
guesthouse will open up on Dec. 5 in one of the buildings of the Tobolsk prison
complex, featuring guest rooms that were once prison cells. The bravest guests
will get the opportunity to experience the horrors of imprisonment, with the
organizers promising “hours of loneliness in the solitary confinement cells,
whose walls have absorbed fear and pain.”

“Just
imagine how many events and mysteries remain obscure and lost with the end of
that era. A mandatory event is the meal – ‘prison gruel’,” a representative of
the hostel said.

Located just
east of the Urals, Tobolsk was the first capital of Siberia and is one of the
largest cities in the Tyumen Region. The city was home to the exiled Romanov imperial
family for 8 months in 1917-1918.

Central
Tobolsk contains a former transit prison for convicts that was later converted
into a museum. The prison complex was built in 1855, had a strict detention
regime, and was finally abolished in 1989. Throughout the years, many notorious
convicts passed through the prison’s walls, including philosopher Nikolai
Chernyshevsky and writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky.